Mark and Patricia McCloskey explained why they pleaded guilty to the charges stemming from a viral incident last summer where the couple was seen holding firearms amid Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations in front of their St. Louis home.
The prosecutor, Mark said, “dropped all the felony charges, all the gun charges, and charged me with a crime that said I purposely placed other people in apprehension of imminent fear of physical injury.”
Mark McCloskey, a lawyer, pleaded guilty to a Class C misdemeanor of fourth-degree assault, while his wife, Patricia McCloskey, pleaded guilty to a Class A misdemeanor of second-degree harassment. They will pay the maximum fines of $2,000 and $750, and they won’t serve any jail time.
The two will be forced to forfeit the weapons they were holding when they confronted BLM protesters who were marching near their home last summer.
According to McCloskey in the Newsmax interview, he and his wife were able to avoid more serious charges that would have landed them in prison for years.
And regarding the now-viral incident, “As I said on the courthouse steps, if that’s a crime in Missouri, I did it, and I'll do it again,” McCloskey said, noting that he will pay what he described as a “parking ticket, a $750 fine, and that’s it.”
“God came knocking on our door disguised as an angry mob, and it transformed us,” McCloskey added in the Thursday interview. “Patty and I decided to just put the rest of our lives on hold and do what we can to save this great nation.”
He continued: “Our liberties are being stripped from us so quickly, and the country is deteriorating so fast, we just said, ‘We don’t care what it takes, we’re going to put everything else on hold, and do what we can to restore the America that we knew when we were kids.’”
In previous interviews, the couple said that BLM protesters threatened them with bodily harm.
“They were going to come in there. They were going to burn down the house,” Patricia McCloskey said, recalling what the demonstrators had allegedly told them. “They were going to be living in our house after I was dead, and they were pointing to different rooms and said, ‘That’s going to be my bedroom, and that’s going to be the living room, and I’m going to be taking a shower in that room.'”
Prosecutors in their case disputed some of their claims, including that a BLM protester was armed.
Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who had charged both of them, was later removed from a role in their case after a judge in late 2020 ruled that she appeared to have started prosecution against the two for political purposes.
The Epoch Times has contacted the McCloskeys for comment.
